It's been about an hour since the final voice message played and this film closed and I sit here absolutely floored by the power of Chantal Akerman's cinema. Her work specifically in the 70s has become something of great importance to me personally. Her films in this period are formally rigorous, pushing the form into areas that I'm not sure had been approached yet and it's a shame that nobody remembers her for anything other than Jeanne Dielman.

Les Rendez-vous d’Anna is a deeply personal kind of autobiographical tale. Anna moves through cities showing her films having short encounters with strangers, friends and family and each scene is filled with a kind of unknowing sadness that seeps through. Anna is…

In New Orleans, everything is demarcated temporally as "before the storm" or "after the storm." The entire world is shaped and colored by Hurricane Katrina and the federal floods, and it comes up in unexpected ways, from casual references used to indicate when something happened to significant, simple explanations for why something is the way it is now. It's always there. In The Meetings of Anna, the watershed moment that seems to haunt all of the characters is apparently WWII.

It's there haunting everyone Anna meets, directly or indirectly, from lost loved ones to the economic results of the war. It has, over the 30 years between the end of it and the time of this film, altered countless lives,…

Chantal Akerman almost exclusively works on horizontal planes of space. Her compositions are known for their flat, minimalist staging, and she usually cuts with perpendicular angles to emphasize each shot's flatness. So one of the many surprising shots in Les Rendez-Vous d'Anna comes early. Anna leaves her hotel in Germany, and the camera tracks alongside her in a horizontal dolly. Suddenly, a flash of vertical motion interrupts the frame. It's a female maid, almost nonchalantly in the background, waving a sheet as she makes the bed. Another few moments later, another maid appears in the depth of the frame, also working. Akerman then cuts to a perpendicular frame, as Anna continues to walk down the hallway, and three more maids…

"I miss you. I have no one to talk to."
"But you never talked to me."

Feelings of loneliness and isolation radiate through every frame, yet there's just enough tenderness to keep me going. People are drawn to Anna, and they want to tell her everything, but to know someone's secrets is not the same as being close to them. To watch Anna through Akerman's static camera as she tries to find a real love in these lonely cities is richly engaging. It's a slow movie -- I would be lying if I said parts of it didn't bore me. However, in the case of films like this, where the narrative takes a back seat to character and atmosphere, I…

Les rendez-vous d'Anna is a formal curiosity first and a character piece second.

Revolving around a female film director traveling to the location of her newest film's screening, the film's premise carries the expectation of glamour, colorful characterizations and perhaps a cinema-based narrative. However, Chantal Akerman offers none of these things, actively avoiding what is normally seen in stories like this and radically shifting storytelling conventions. There are no sparkling movie stars working the room and the actual screening is never shown. Instead, the bulk of the film concerns itself with mundane activities and static action- lonely evenings in hotel rooms and lengthy train rides.

Anna, our protagonist, has five meetings throughout her trip. There's a sexual encounter with a…

“Anna, where are you?”

Há algumas pausas recorrentes no cinema de Chantal que demonstram de qual dimensão da natureza humana estamos falando; a menina que está ao meio da pista de dança em Portrait de une Jeune Fille olha perdida para as pessoas ao redor; a mulher grávida olha através da porta em Hotel Monterey; Chantal olha para o espelho e vê seu corpo nu; Jeanne olha para as mãos enquanto corta as batatas, Samy Frei por entre as caixas em Le Demenagement. Há uma expressão muito sincera da solidão de todas essas personagens, um deslocamento natural.
Em Anna, a personagem abre janelas, portas, desce dos trens e caminha pelos corredores rumo ao vazio dos quartos. O barulho das cidades…